Review Detail

Rating 
 
5.0

Fingers crossed

I have the highest hopes for this recipe as I have not been able to successfully veganize my favorite Christmas cut-out butter cookie recipe to date due to, I think, the unavailability of a suitable vegan butter option. The only non-vegan items in my cutouts are butter and 1 egg. HOWEVER, the commercially available vegan butter is all salted and I think that it is the reason why the cookies have an unusual "aftertaste" or "off" flavor on the tongue when I do the substitution with Earth Balance sticks for the butter (I don't think it's the "egg" substitutes b/c I've tried multiple methods to replace the egg and still, the same weird aftertaste remains... hence, my suspicion that the problem is the salted vegan butter replacement). Do you think that I can remove all of the salt from this recipe whenever I want to use it just for 'clean' baking? or does the salt serve an essential purpose/ratios/etc.? The flavor is perfect as written for traditional butter purposes, but I think that I will need to remove the salt to "save" my recipes requiring unsalted butter. Have you tried it without adding the salt for an "unsalted" version? Any suggestions would be so appreciated. [and by the way, THANK YOU for having an AMAZING site/recipes to offer!!!]

Owner's reply

Thanks so much Tiffanybakes! The salt is just there to amplify the butteriness and savoriness only. It's redundant if you're using salt in your recipe already, which you probably are. So it doesn't matter if you use salt when making this Vegan Butter or not in terms of texture.

I developed Vegan Butter to use salt so it would be similar to European salted butter in both flavor and texture. This also makes it versatile for spreading on things like toast and other non-baking applications so non-bakers can benefit from it.

Since I rarely eat commercial vegan butters anymore, any time I do, I immediately notice the flavoring (diacetyl) and find it incredibly off putting. Perhaps that's what you're noticing in the cookies? Hopefully this Vegan Butter helps you get closer to nailing your recipe!

Was this review helpful to you?